RSS

How-To Geek

Over the years, we’ve written about loads of ways to disable features, tweak things that don’t work the way you want, and remove other things entirely. Here’s the list of the 50 best ways to do just that.

Just in case you missed some of our recent roundup articles, here’s a couple of roundups of our very best articles for you to check out:

If you’ve already been through those, keep reading for how to disable loads of Windows features you might not want.

Disable Context Menu Items

After you start installing a bunch of software, you’ll notice your context menu starts filling up with more and more items, becoming bloated, slow, and even more annoying—it starts taking up the whole screen. Here’s how to get rid of some of those items and trim it back down to size.

You’ll probably notice that the first article is an in-depth guide to help you get rid of just about any item, whereas the rest are more specific for some of the more annoying items.

How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista

The caps lock key is one of those remnants of another age of computers, back when people used to shout at each other more often. Unless you’re in the accounting department, it’s probably not very useful, so today we’ll learn how to disable it.

Disabling Irritating Dialogs and Popups

There’s nothing more annoying than being in the middle of working on something when the Windows Update dialog pops up and tells you to reboot right that instant, but thankfully you can disable that, and many other dialogs and popups in Windows.

You’ll probably not want to take the drastic step of disabling all notification balloons, but it’s an option.

Disabling Icons You Might Not Want

Here’s a quick list of all the icon-related articles we have that cover how to disable this or that in regards to icons. You might know how to get rid of the Recycle Bin icon, but we’ve got other things covered too—like hiding drives from your computer, or hiding desktop icon text entirely.

Yes, we included how to disable the system tray, which is probably not something you should do. Learning is fun.

Disabling Windows Aero and Such

If you’re not a fan of all the beautiful new Aero features in Windows 7, you can get rid of them, or maybe you want to get rid of the built-in shortcut keys, or just tweak the Aero Peek delay. Here’s how to do it.

You should read the disclaimers carefully before you start disabling built-in services, and you definitely shouldn’t delete power plans or services unless you’re really sure what you’re doing.

Settings You Can Tweak to Disable Behavior

Sometimes you don’t want to disable something entirely, you just want to disable the way it behaves, like Windows Update hijacking the Sleep button when you don’t want it to. Here’s how to change some of the way things work by default.

Disable Your Entire Computer (and Delete All Data)

You’re probably asking yourself why we included this one in the roundup. Why? Because this is the ultimate way to disable something you don’t want—if you’re going to be selling your PC or giving it away, you probably don’t want anybody getting to your data. Here’s how to wipe your drive entirely.

hi got pb easynote tx86 in jan this year. one problem cursor sometimes wont move to start btm left just jumps side ways to the right. turn off computer and restart works fine for awhile. Tried turning off pointer in control panel to no avail,tried slowing down cursor speed to no avail. Touchpad very sensitive is there away to reduce senitivity any help welcome.cheers

how to disable features in win7…?
the quick and easy way…
buy mac…use linux…
simple as that…
people do not understand the features and the reason why the features are there…
so…”oh…i’m stupid…let’s disable cause i am stupid”…
why do not post on that how to…a “why” that features exist…?
i must say…i am a fan of those posts…
i feel better when i see soo much idiots in one place…
(sorry for idiots…the word i wanted to use is harsher)

DID YOU KNOW?

It is possible to trademark colors; examples of trademarked colors include the medium robin egg blue used by Tiffany & Co., the orange used for the handles of Fiskars scissors, and the magenta used by T-Mobile.